Saturday, May 23, 2009

EDIT: For full breakdown of the buffs/debuffs I use for power auras and the settings I used to make them (with import strings), check here!

I've been trying out a new mod (well, new for me!) called Power Auras the past week, and have fallen in love with it. The gist of it is that it adds a customizable graphic on your screen that can be set to different transparency/color/animations when you have a select buff or debuff up on you or your target.

Technically it has settings for showing when a spell is "useable" and I tried setting up graphics for Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness, too, but that didn't seem to work for me, as they didn't go away when the spell was on cooldown. :( (there's a fix for this by editing the lua code, you can see it in this post's comments). Power Auras works great, though, for the buffs and debuffs!

Above, you can see the big leaf I have for a NG proc, and the red aura zooming into existence since I just took a backstab from a roguely trash mob!

Faerie Fire: a smaller pinkish rune thingy sorta off to the side, underlying where I still have my Debuff Filter timers, almost like a backdrop. It shows up when any faerie fire (feral or otherwise) is currently on the target.

Nature's Grace: a green leaf just to the right of my HuD, big and noticable, lasting until the buff wears off. It's a great "hey you're casting faster and your GCD is like 1sec long right now!" announcement.

Eclipse Proc: A faint half-circle outline aura. Since the eclipse buff has the same name for both solar and lunar procs, it can only monitor the general "hey eclipse has procced," but I like having that extra graphical alert to remind me that it's there, one that isn't lost among other buffs or timers.

Berserk: for my feral, it shows up a bloodsplatter off the side of my HuD when I have berserk active.

Mangle/Trauma: I have aligned a runic half-circle to look almost like it's a targeting circle around my feral feet, and it will only show up if the current enemy target does NOT have a mangle OR a trauma debuff on them. (still trying to tweak this to work as an either/or... )

Non-druid buffs I have added include:

Bloodlust: nice red "fang marks" over my character in the center screen.

Mana: a pulsing purplish light right over the low-mana-end of my mana bar on my HuD directs my attention to the fact that I have less than 20% mana.

Health: a giant red twisty aura thing boxing around my HuD that shouts "holy crap HEAL" when I have less than 30% health.

Mark of the Faceless: you know that leech debuff General Vezax puts on you? This puts a giant pulsing skull over my head on my screen as an extra warning ;)

Saronite Vapors: again for Vezax, this puts a smaller green skull on my character when I have more than a 5 stack on me. It's a not-so-subtle reminder to gtfo of the puddle!

Defend: this is specific to the joust at the argent tournament! If my target has any shields up, this puts a nice white shield graphic just off the side of my HuD. Very useful on the smaller opponents like the mechanostriders and hawkstriders, who it can sometimes be difficult to see if they still have shields up.

Have any suggestions on other things it monitors really well? I'd love to hear them!

15 comments:

Wow, this is a GREAT idea. I had heard of some other classes using this mod, but never a resto druid. It sounds really helpful - especially the clearcasting/nature's grace. I wonder if you can set it to show something when a trinket that has a 'chance-to-proc-a-bajillion haste' goes off?

Just discovered your blog, and I like it a lot! The depth of your analysis is fantastic.

I have been tinkering with Powa Aura as well. The problem with Swiftmend is that Powa Aura shows when an action is useable, not when it is off cooldown. So you need to target a person who is "Swiftmendable", ie has either Rejuvenation or Regrowth ticking on them, in order for an indicator showing that Swiftmend is off CD to appear. Which is obviously a bit of a drag. Obviously, all you want to know is whether SM is off CD, you don't want to have to target someone to know that. Eventually I came across a post on the Blizzard forums that gave a solution.

This is how you fix:

1. Open up PowerAuras.lua in < wow directory >\Interface\AddOns\PowerAuras\ using notepad or any other text editor.

Yes, it's a pity you have to edit the lua. If you want to use Power Aura for this purpose, I suggest going on to Curse to nag the author about the issue, quite a few people have done this already!

For my own part, I actually recently came to the conclusion just to limit Power Aura to Clearcasting and Nature's Grace, because otherwise there is just too much crap around my character.

A really nice way to deal with Swiftmend if you use Grid is a little plug-in that has been recently updated after being unloved for a while.

It tells you (through an icon or whatever) in relation to any given player on your Grid frames when SM is available and you can set threshold values for health and time left on the HoTs so you can get the most out of every Swiftmend. I am hooked.

What I don't like about the Pulse mods is that they flash across your screen and then disappear. Not a problem for dps who are going to cast as soon as they see the proc or the ability coming off cooldown and who aren't staring at healthbars. However, healers don't necessarily use their abilities that come up straight away and I find that you can miss the flash, or you can become uncertain whether it's flashed or not. The great thing about Power Aura is that the indicator can sit on your screen until the ability is used.

"Debuff" is selected from the dropdown menu, and I typed in the name "Faerie" in the text box below it. Then I put a checkmark in the box for Enemy Target.

Aside from that, I just picked out a graphic, colored it, positioned it, and decided what sort of animation I wanted it to have :) (I chose static for it, with a zoom-out/zoom-in for the beginning and ending).

Goodbye TellMeWhen. I have joined the ranks of PowerAuras. Its way WAY prettier. It also seems to be less buggy telling me when I don't have Wrath of Air Totem and (now that I know I have to pull Living Crystals off my bar when I don't want it to show) less buggy with that too.

I too was reluctant to edit the .lua file to fix the Swiftmend issue, and in fact when I opened the .lua file the referenced line "--- ----" was not in the file. I guess that it's been through hundreds of revisions since those original modification instructions were written.

I am very happy to advise that some wonderful person over at Tree Bark Jacket has made available a Power Aura export for Swiftmend that just works!

Considering it was a lua fix for a year and a half ago, yeah, the mod's been changed up quite a bit since then :) I don't currently have any issues with the spell not showing its cooldown anymore, in fact just tested it and it's running fine, without any edits.

Have my own export already, as well, here (as was linked at the top of this post):